Expert: Columbus school district's attendance data 'not logical'

Sunday

Columbus fifth-graders come to school nearly every day. But roughly half of them can't pass their math, reading and science exams.

Columbus fifth-graders come to school nearly every day. But roughly half of them can’t pass their math, reading and science exams.

Linden-McKinley STEM Academy has had near-perfect attendance for the past three school years. But only 54 percent of Linden-McKinley students graduate, and fewer than 2 in 5 can pass the state science exam on the first try.

If showing up is half the battle in helping students succeed, why aren’t more Columbus schools winning?

It’s a question raised in the wake of allegations that Columbus schools retroactively alter students’ attendance data, which could affect their standing on the state-issued school report cards. Student attendance rates are among the benchmarks used to determine school and district quality.

District officials say Columbus students are making progress even though they might not be passing exams and linking student achievement to attendance is too simplistic. A spokesman said it’s unfair to assume or imply that there has been any wrongdoing by district employees.

“We don’t want to oversimplify the issue or the solution, or to draw conclusions based on a cursory look at raw information,” district spokesman Jeff Warner said in response to questions from The Dispatch about schools with high attendance and low academic performance.

Research shows a strong link between attendance and student outcomes: If children come to school regularly, they do better on tests and are more likely to graduate. That’s why some researchers say the great attendance but low passing rates in some Columbus schools is puzzling.

“It doesn’t make any sense; it’s not logical,” said Michael Gottfried, an education economist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who studies attendance issues in urban schools. “It just doesn’t seem possible that you’d show up and the rate would be so low, unless their teacher quality is so dire in those schools.”

In the case of some Columbus schools, “the fact that there’s no link is fishy,” Gottfried said. “ If the numbers are real, if the kids are actually going to school, those kids should be doing better in reading and math.”

Current and former district officials say there’s no good explanation for the changes that are made to student records at year’s end, just before they are submitted to the Ohio Department of Education. They say that the attendance rates are being purposely inflated.

Superintendent Gene Harris has said there are acceptable reasons for records to be changed, such as secretaries catching up with attendance data at the end of the school year and making changes. However, she said, only a thorough investigation will show whether the changes have been made with a legitimate purpose.

The district’s internal auditor is investigating. Harris also has asked the state auditor’s office for help, and the state Department of Education also plans to get involved.

Board of Education member Mike Wiles said he’s awaiting the internal auditor’s results before he passes judgment on whether there was wrongdoing, but said his “gut feeling” is that any student-data errors were unintentional.

“It’s too big an organization to try and covertly corrupt information that is available to the public,” he said. “You have 6,000 employees, and everybody would pretty much have to be in on it to cover it up.”

The disconnect between attendance and achievement is apparent in hundreds of examples throughout Columbus, such as: • At West High, the attendance rate is nearly 94?percent, but only 66?percent of students graduate. • The numbers show that students at Fairwood Elementary show up nearly every day. But only 13 percent of fourth-graders passed the state math exam in the 2010-11 school year, the most-recent school data available. In fifth grade, only 2.3 percent passed the math test.

• Champion, one of Ohio’s lowest-performing middle schools, meets the state’s attendance-rate target of at least 93 percent. But no more than 46 percent of students there pass any state exam.

The Cleveland school district submitted bogus attendance rates to the state for years until the practice came to light in 2005. There, administrators coded students who were absent with an excuse as having attended. It led to highly inflated attendance rates and prompted district and state investigations.

Doug Roby, a Wright State University education professor, has researched attendance and achievement links in Ohio schools. He’s found that, as expected, the best schools in the state have great attendance rates; the worst schools have poor rates.

“What anyone would normally expect is those who attend school seem to do better at school,” he said.

But what does it mean for those schools with high attendance rates but poor results for students?